Predella panel of an altarpiece; other panels from the altarpiece are in the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts (1958.38); the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (1955.11); and the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena (129)

Predella panel of an altarpiece; other panels from the altarpiece are in the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts (1958.38); the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (1955.11); and the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena (129)

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Label:In 1264, Pope Urban IV asked Thomas Aquinas to write a special liturgy for Corpus Christi, a new holiday that celebrated Christ's bodily presence in the bread and wine of the Roman Catholic Mass. Here Thomas kneels, with his manuscript in his hands, before the pope.

Additional information:

Italian Paintings 1250-1450

In August 1264 Pope Urban IV Pantaleon asked Thomas Aquinas to compose a liturgical office for the feast of Corpus Domini or Corpus Christi, which the pope had established in a bull issued on the eleventh of that month. Urban IV had been inspired to institute the feast after a miraculous occurrence in nearby Bolsena: While celebrating mass, a priest from Prague named Peter had had his doubts about the doctrine of transubstantiation allayed when the wafer dripped blood on the corporal, the cloth on which the eucharistic elements are placed. This doctrine, which maintains that during the sacrament of the Eucharist the wafer is transformed into Christ's body, was much discussed in the mid-thirteenth century, and thus on June 19, 1264, soon after the priest had revealed the mystery, the corporal was carried to the pope in Orvieto. Aquinas compiled the office in record time and presented it to Urban IV, who is known to have circulated at least one copy before his death on October 2 in Perugia.

Previously identified (Berenson 1913) as Saint Dominic appealing to a king, the Johnson panel was correctly recognized as the presentation of Aquinas's office by Reverend Charles M. Daley, O.P. (letter to the John G. Johnson Collection, dated Oak Park, Illinois, February 7, 1935).

The scene is set in a hall consisting of two bays, whose vaults are painted blue with golden stars. The pope, wearing a tiara with one crown, is seated on a raised faldstool. Kneeling before him is Saint Thomas Aquinas in a Dominican habit, holding the manuscript of his office, from which golden rays shine. Six cardinals view the scene. The one closest to the pope holds a gilt chalice with a paten and a host in one hand and a chalice veil in the other; the cardinal in the center, who points toward the pope, wears a Dominican habit.

The scene of Thomas presenting the office of Corpus Domini to the pope was depicted on the reliquary of the corporal in 1337-38,1 by Ugolino di Vieri, in the cathedral of Orvieto and in the mural cycle of 1357-64, by Ugolino di Prete Ilario and Giovanni di Buccio di Leonardello, decorating that same reliquary's chapel. In both of these representations the audience hall is depicted frontally, and the emphasis is on the pope, not Aquinas. By contrast Taddeo di Bartolo chose an arrangement by which the viewer looks into the hall from the side and can thus see the action in full. Berenson (1913) noted that Taddeo's composition was derived from Ambrogio Lorenzetti's mural Boniface VIII Receives Saint Louis of Toulouse as a Novice of about 1325 in San Francesco in Siena.2 Variants are also found in two scenes of the predella of Pietro Lorenzetti's (q.v.) altarpiece of 1329 from San Niccolò al Carmine in Siena.3

The Johnson panel seems to have been part of a predella to an altarpiece. Solberg (1991) suggested three other panels came from the same predella: Death of Napoleone Orsini and His Revival by Saint Dominic (see San Antonio, Texas, McNay Art Museum, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Frederic G. Oppenheimer, no. 1955.11); Crucifixion (Private collection); and Death of Saint Peter Martyr (see Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art, no. 1958.38). The provenance of the first two panels can be traced to the collection of Johann Anton Ramboux, and it is likely that the third, which has a German provenance, also came from that collection. It is known that Ramboux purchased a large number of paintings in Siena in 1838,4 although the Johnson panel cannot be traced back that far. The architecture in the Philadelphia painting, which is oriented to the right, suggests that the scene was set on the far left of the predella; its opposite on the right is missing. The two scenes showing stories from Saints Dominic and Peter Martyr's lives were respectively to the left and right of the center panel, which represented the Crucifixion. The main sections of the altarpiece would have probably depicted the Virgin and Child with saints. Solberg (1991, p. 568) has suggested that a fragment in Siena showing the head of Saint Peter Martyr (see Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale, no. 129) was one of those saints.5

The Johnson panel is the only scene in the group that does not have horizontal wood grain. However, a shallow rabbet cut into the right edge (see reverse of Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection cat. 101) is certainly proof that the panel was inserted into a larger structure. If it was in fact part of the predella, it may have been at the bottom of an end pilaster, as in Taddeo di Bartolo's high altarpiece of 1401 for the cathedral of Montepulciano, where the end scenes of the predella have vertical grain and support pilasters.6 While historiated predella panels under pilasters are not rare, they usually form part of a cycle dedicated to a single subject, such as the life of Christ, like the Montepulciano altarpiece, or a single saint.7

As it is most likely that the Johnson panel was positioned below an image of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the main section of the altarpiece, rather than being below a pilaster, it and its now-lost opposite on the other end of the predella could have been slightly raised with respect to the other scenes. A comparison can be made with Giovanni di Paolo's (q.v.) dispersed predella of about 1461 representing the life of Saint Catherine of Siena, a rare example of a Sienese predella not painted on a single plank of horizontally grained wood, and one in which several scenes, including those at the ends, jutted out from the sequence.8

Sibilla Symeonides (1965, pp. 99-100) proposed dating the Northampton panel to about 1403.9 Solberg (1991, p. 568) concurred, based on comparison with the scenes of Taddeo's dispersed predella for the Perugian church of San Francesco al Prato in 1403.10 This dating is probably correct, but analogies can also be made with his later works, such as the predella scenes of the 1411 altarpiece in Volterra.11 Carl Brandon Strehlke, from Italian paintings, 1250-1450, in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004, pp. 408-412.

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